2010 Chevrolet Camaro Driveshaft Upgrade - Failure Avoidance

When your late-model Camaro starts making serious power, it’s time to ditch the stock differential in favor of something stronger

We love adding horsepower and torque to our Camaros, but all the elation turns to tears when the supporting players start turning to slag under the added power. Our first compulsion might be to cuss out the failed part as being inferior or poorly designed, but to be honest it’s not GM’s job to equip a new Camaro with a differential or driveshaft capable of handling 500, 600, or more horsepower. As hot rodders, it’s up to us to make sure the entire drivetrain is equally robust when the power numbers start ratcheting up.

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Such was the case with the ’10 owned by Centerforce Clutch’s Pat Wilson. A while back they flung a Magnuson 2300 TVS blower on the top of their LS3, bumping it to nearly 700 rwhp. Pat knew he was one hard run away from fragging his axles, diff, or driveshaft. Hell, maybe all three. Rather than bemoan his situation, he contacted Frank Rehak of The Drive Shaft Shop (DSS). Frank has been beefing up drivetrains for 30 years and had a new kit on the shelf specifically designed for new Camaro owners looking for rock-solid parts. His system replaces the stock differential with a stout Ford 9-inch center section. It also addresses the weak GM two-piece driveshaft and axles by replacing them with pieces built to hold up to well over 1,000 hp. Once installed, Pat would be able to launch his ’10 as hard as his sticky tires will allow, at least until the stock transmission grenades, but that’s another story for another time.

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2010 Chevrolet Camaro Driveshaft Upgrade - Failure Avoidance

1. First up was getting rid of the stock parts. We removed the brake rotors and unbolted the trailing arms, toe rods, and upper control arm from the upright. This allowed us to swing the upright out and remove the axle end from the upright. With this done, we just gave the axle a yank and it popped free of the GM center section.

2. We then dropped the exhaust system and removed the OEM two-piece driveshaft from the Camaro. The differential itself is held in the cradle by three bolts.

3. With those bolts removed, we were able to lower the stock differential. It weighed in at almost 80 lbs., so we made sure to use a couple people and a poll jack.

4. The main player in the 9-inch retrofit kit from The Drive Shaft Shop (DSS) is this steel case. The rear mount is tig-welded in place, and the front two mounts are on a bracket which attaches to the center section by way of the five pinion bolts. All the mounts include polyurethane bushings.

5. The DSS kit doesn’t include a center section, but they can provide one if needed. In our case, we had them send over this posi-equipped unit from Strange Engineering. The Strange S-Series case will fit with no grinding, but some cases will require a bit of trimming for clearance. For more added grunt off the line, we went with 3.70 gears.

6. After installing the Strange center section into the DSS housing, we were able to compare the two units. To get the front two mounting points, there’s a bracket and a ring that need to be secured to the third member by way of its pinion bolts. Some third member cases, like the aluminum Strange offering, require that the ring be omitted to get the proper alignment.

7. And this is how the bracket and ring looked once installed.

8. According to DSS, the hardest part of coming up with this kit was figuring out how to interface the old-school 9-inch center section with the modern IRS half-shafts.

9. The answer was to use small stub-axles, which would provide a rock-solid mounting point for the DSS half-shafts. On newer housings the vent tube has been moved to the top of the case to better attach the factory vent hose.

10.The 31-spline stubs have O-ring bushings and are guaranteed to support 1,400 hp. DSS does offer larger spline stubs for a few extra bucks.

11. The supplied Allen bolts were used to secure the stub axles to the housing.

12. Before installing the second stub axle, we poured in a quart and a half of 85w-140 Royal Purple gear oil. Since the rear doesn’t have traditional axle tubes, less oil is required, and pouring in the traditional three quarts will just result in a mess out of the vent tube.

13. Behold the completely assembled replacement center section. As stated, the newer cases will have the vent fitting up top as well as a drain plug added to the bottom.

14. The assembly is pretty heavy so you’ll want to use a floor jack if doing this on the ground, or a tranny jack if up on a lift.

15. What we found was that the holes in the three factory mounts were a touch small for the new hardware so we had to open them up a bit. We were then able to secure it in place using the grade-8 hardware supplied by DSS.

16. Our system came with Pro-Series 30-spline axles rated up to 1,400 hp. Newer versions of this axle will have custom billet outers made out of a new blended material for extra strength. The CV joints feature REM polished internals.

17. The new axles simply bolted to the stub axles on the inboard side using the supplied hardware.

18. The outboard ends attached to the uprights just like the OEM units. Once in place, we were able to reattach all the suspension widgets and re-install the brakes. Since we were at Hotchkis, a set of their sway bars and springs found their way under the Camaro.

19. And here you can see the center section and axles fully installed under the Camaro.

20. The SS Camaro came from GM with a very heavy two-piece driveshaft. The DSS replacement is a single-piece 3.5- inch aluminum shaft with custom-milled billet mounts. The back has provisions for a standard 1350 U-joint, while the front is set up to mate to the unique flange on the Camaro’s Tremec 6060 trans. For extra cash, they can also provide the driveshaft in carbon fiber.

21. First up, we attached this billet mount to the three-bolt flange on the back of the transmission. DSS has a badass driveshaft balancer that can spin to 9,500 rpm. This ensures a much more accurate balance and vibration-free performance.

22. This gave us a mounting point for the driveshaft’s CV joint. We asked DSS why they didn’t use a more traditional U-joint instead of the billet plates and they replied, “It seems that most people feel the best way to mount a U-joint is by a pinion yoke with U-bolts. After extensive testing, we have to disagree with some that think this would introduce vibrations. The pins are ground with the bearing surfaces on the trans and diff so it’s an exact centerline. The billet plates are machined on center and the flanges mount at a larger diameter and pilot, making it better than any u-bolt style yoke. With the plate and flange, we have been able to get a more concentric centerline. In fact, when we tooled up the new balancer (which spins at 9500 rpm), we ended up using flanges instead of yokes because each time the yoke was taken off and remounted, it was not within tolerance for the balancer. The flanges hold true no matter how many times they are re-mounted.”

23. (Top Right) The rear, however, attaches with a standard 1350 U-joint arrangement. Our kit didn’t come with the straps, so make sure you have some on hand. And just like that, we were done with the installation. All the various heat shields reattached to the Camaro with no clearance issues, and aside from having to bore out a few mounting holes, nothing else needed modification. The only thing left to do now was to properly break in the rear, then Pat can hit the track with added confidence that he won’t need a tow truck.

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